Methodology

1. Ingestion

We start from the official CMS NPPES Data Dissemination file — currently the June 2026 vintage. The full file is parsed and loaded into a columnar store optimized for fast, read-only analytical queries across millions of records.

2. Normalization

• Names and addresses are cleaned and cased consistently for display.
• Provider entity type is split into individuals (Type 1) and organizations (Type 2).
• Free-text credential values are normalized (uppercased, punctuation stripped) so common credentials like MD, DO, and NP group cleanly.
• Practice state and city are standardized for facets and directory pages.

3. Taxonomy mapping

Each provider’s primary taxonomy code is joined to the NUCC Health Care Provider Taxonomy crosswalk to produce a human-readable specialty (grouping → classification → specialization).

4. Aggregation

We precompute counts by state, specialty, city, and credential so directory and facet pages load instantly without scanning the full corpus on every request.

5. Refresh

NPPES publishes a full monthly file with weekly incrementals. When we refresh, the entire dataset is rebuilt and every page’s “as of” date updates to reflect the new vintage.

6. Profile Score

Each provider profile shows a Profile Score (0–100). It measures profile completeness and documented public activity only — it is not a quality, outcomes, or patient-satisfaction rating, and we publish no reviews or star ratings. The score is composed from signals we actually hold:

• Registry tenure (25%)— years since NPPES enumeration (saturates at 20 years). This is registry tenure, not“years of practice.”
• Profile completeness (25%)— how many core record fields (name, city/state, phone, taxonomy, license, ZIP) are populated.
• Practice footprint (15%)— number of documented practice locations, capped at 5.
• Medicare service volume (25%)— total Medicare fee-for-service services, cohort-normalized within the provider’s own specialty (90th percentile of same-specialty peers anchors the top of the scale). Medicare Part B covers only ~12% of providers, so this is only counted when CMS data exists.
• Open Payments transparency (10%)— whether the provider has any CMS Open Payments disclosures. Presence-only; never a penalty.

No provider is penalized for missing data. When a provider has no Medicare or Open Payments records (the ~88% without them), those signals are removed from the weighting entirely— not scored as zero — and the remaining signals are renormalized to 100. The two baseline signals every provider has (tenure + completeness, plus footprint) therefore determine the full score for most providers. All Medicare-derived figures are labeled with their source and year, and absence of Medicare data never implies a provider “doesn’t do” something.

Corrections

NPPES is the system of record. The fastest way to fix your information is to update it in NPPES; the change flows here on the next refresh. See corrections & disputes.